I read somewhere—perhaps it was “5 Tips to Instantly Up Your Instagram Game” or some such—that, when taking photos of people, you should ask them to open their mouths as wide as possible.

Interestingly, it works. It seems weird, both to them and to you, but the photos that result often have much more life in them than they would otherwise.

I received similar instructions many years ago from a CBC Radio producer: I was going into the studio to record a commentary, and she advised me to make my points so emphatically as to appear (to myself) to be raving. It was very hard to do this, and it made me very uncomfortable, but I had to agree that the result was better.

An interesting piece of photography advice… I like the caricature advice for audio as well. It was something that obviously worked for people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly.

United Talent Agency and Creative Artists Agency have reached a settlement in their nearly four-year lawsuit over five agents CAA had accused UTA of poaching.
Details of the settlement have not been made public, but in a statement provided to TheWrap, UTA’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, said: “The m...

Dana Brunetti and producing partner Keegan Rosenberger’s Cavalry Media has tapped veteran CAA agent Matt DelPiano to lead the company’s newly launched division Cavalry Management.
Cavalry Media, the finance and production outfit that was established in June 2018, announced on Wednesday that it w...

EXCLUSIVE: Talk about a shocker, and also a great get for Dana Brunetti, Keegan Rosenberger and their Cavalry Media. Matt DelPiano, who has been a top agent at CAA and a 26-year veteran of the talent agency, is becoming a partner at Cavalry Media and launching a full-service management company, Cavalry Management.

At CAA:

Agent Matt DelPiano has left the agency after 26 years to launch a full service management company, Calvary Management. All of his clients are expected to stay with him as he transitions.

At UTA:

The agency has settled its long-running dispute with CAA over alleged agent-poaching that occurred back in 2015. The case stemmed from UTA's shocking hires of five senior agents that decimated CAA's comedy department.

At ICM Partners:

The agency has dropped Celine Dion and initiated legal proceedings against her for an alleged failure to pay commission. It's an unfortunate end for the singer at the agency, who had been representing her for three decades.

Elsewhere:

Longtime agency Stone Manners Salners has renamed itself Artists & Representatives. This comes following the retirement of partner Tim Stone and the elevation of agents Ben Sands and AdrianPellereau.

Two law enforcement sources with knowledge of the investigation tell CNN that Chicago Police believe the actor Jussie Smollett paid two men to orchestrate an assault on him that he reported late last month.

This doesn’t sound like it’s going to end well….

I suspect that if this turns out like it seems to be turning lately and the entire motive was greed based, it will turn out that he’ll have somehow found out that others at his level on the show are making a lot more than he comparatively. This might then make sense within only the Hollywood community, but it’s definitively not going to play well in middle America where his likely $60K per episode (or ~$1.3M/year) is going to seem out sized for a relatively new star. Even worse, isn’t the show just about to it’s 4th year and over 100 episodes at which point everyone renegotiates their contracts to get 2-5x their prior salaries if they’ve got even half-decent agents?

In an interview with the Associated Press, Affleck admitted to contributing to an unprofessional environment on the set of “I’m Still Here,” which was shot in 2008 and 2009. “I tolerated that kind of behavior from other people and I wish that I hadn’t. And I regret a lot of that,” Affleck, who directed, produced, and co-wrote the film, said. “I really did not know what I was responsible for as the boss. I don’t even know if I thought of myself as the boss. But I behaved in a way and allowed others to behave in a way that was really unprofessional. And I’m sorry.”

Someone has either coached him and/or he’s got a great publicist helping him out. He was never eloquent enough to pull off statements like these in my experience.

Among victims and advocates, an important step in dismantling the pervasive problem of harassment and the system that has kept it under wraps for so long is to void or curb the use of NDAs to settle sexual abuse cases.

The tough part is recreating a better system and predicting the potential future abuses that may continue in such a system. How do we enforce fairness fairly? What unintended consequences might there be?

This is another insightful reflection from Pernille Ripp. It continues on from her apology earlier this year for stepping back. It makes me wonder what happens to the ‘edu-influencer‘ when they step back? As much agree with Joe Sanfileppo about the power and potential of being connected, what happens when those people stop answering?

Some of this reminds me a bit of CAA’s mantra to have their agents try to occupy all the buying executives’ time within their coverage areas with CAA clients calls and meetings as a means of not only controlling the conversation, but preventing the competition from having a chance.

In the Wild West of “influencer” marketing, there are few protections and plenty of easy marks.

Of the multi-billion dollar business and the issues with needing to give away one’s password to be tracked within this field, the real loss here seems to be that Instagram isn’t building infrastructure for their users to take advantage of these opportunities. Even if they were only taking a small fraction of the income for facilitating the market, they’re missing out on hundreds of millions.

It’s not mentioned here, but the fact that there are businesses built around the idea of “link in bio” means that Instagram really isn’t innovating on their platform.